Dubai: Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, announced the launch of the ‘Dubai Robotics and Automation (R&A) Program’ on Wednesday. The program will boost the development, testing and adoption of R&A, and accelerate the use of its application in key economic sectors.
The new initiative will raise Dubai's regional and global leadership and strengthen its reputation as a city with one of the highest levels of readiness in the world to adopt future technologies.
Led by the Dubai Future Foundation, the Program, which features five key initiatives, will focus on accelerating research and development in five areas - Production and Manufacturing; Consumer Services and Tourism; Healthcare and Connected Mobility; and Logistics. As part of the Program, 200,000 robots will be provided over the next 10 years to increase efficiency and productivity in various sectors including services, logistics, and the industrial sector, and enhance the competitiveness of Dubai’s economy.
"The Dubai Robotics and Automation Program aims to increase the sector's contribution to Dubai’s GDP to 9 per cent within 10 years,” said Sheikh Hamdan. “We seek to make Dubai one of the world’s top 10 cities in R&A by adopting and developing advanced robotics technologies, empowering national talent, and generating innovative new solutions, products, and services.”
The development of the sector aims to support the diversification of Dubai’s future economy and help build an integrated knowledge base that can contribute to creating new economic opportunities and improving the quality of life.
Three pillars
The Dubai R&A Program is based on three pillars – governance, support for R&D and adoption and utilisation of technologies. As part of the governance pillar, the Program seeks to develop structural supportive mechanisms to build and maintain an optimal environment for R&A development, institutionalise collaboration between R&A developers, create a favourable regulatory and legal environment, formulate standards and create a comprehensive knowledge base.
As part of the second pillar, the Program will seek to support scientific R&D, increase funding allocation in key areas, maximise the participation of local talent and increase the pool of professionals specialised in R&D in robotics and automation.
Within the third pillar, the Dubai R&A Program will help industries adopt and utilise technologies, reduce the cost of robotics adoption, institutionalise investment cooperation in R&A, support R&A systems integration, ensure public acceptance for new technologies, and enhance rates of robotics technology deployment.
